Hunger

What it means to be
“food insecure”

Have you ever looked in your refrigerator and said, Aw, there’s nothing to eat?

Most of us have.

Of course, there’s really food there. It’s just not ready to
serve. Or it’s not what we were craving at that moment.

But some people look in their refrigerators—and there literally
is nothing to eat.

They’re not starving to death. They may have eaten
yesterday. Or the day before. But today they’ll have to try to find food
somewhere.

And they can’t be sure about tomorrow.

That’s called food
insecurity—the lack of adequate nourishment on either a constant or
occasional basis.

There are more than 297,000
people suffering from food insecurity right here in the Las Vegas Valley. That's 15 percent of the population.

Here's something worse: 40 percent of
them are children.

What does that mean for the the people who live with this condition every day?

It means they often go to bed hungry. Skipping meals becomes
a normal part of life. And finding food just for the day is a constant
preoccupation.

But the long-term impact of food insecurity is even worse. It
lowers energy and makes it hard to work or do anything productive. It makes
people susceptible to disease. Children stop attending school. When they do
attend, they can’t concentrate—so they fail.